Borrowed Children Read Free

used his belt, they’d never sit down again.”
    â€œOh, honey,” I kneel beside her. Anna giggles. “They don’t mean really. They just mean they’ll be sore.”
    This is the child who ran out to look when Mama said her birthday was just around the corner.
    â€œYou girls wash up,” Mama calls. “Mandy, come pour the milk.”
    Dinner is slow and silent. Helen drops her cornbread. I pick it up quick and Mama pretends not to see. Before anyone asks for seconds, David mumbles:
    â€œMay we be excused?”
    â€œThere’s applesauce for dessert,” Mama says.
    â€œThanks, but I’ve had enough.”
    Ben agrees.
    â€œWell, then, go along.”
    And they do, walking very carefully, like they had somebody else’s legs.
    Once they’re out of the room, Daddy declares, “Not a nickel of that bill do I mean to pay. Tomorrow I’ll go into town and speak to Lige Asher. He’s bound to have some work those boys can do. They’ll see more of that hotel than they reckoned on.”
    He folds his napkin and puts it beside his plate.
    â€œRena, if you’ll excuse me now, I’ve got a little figuring to do.”
    â€œI’ll bring your coffee.”
    Nodding thanks, he goes back to the desk.
    Daddy likes to carve, and usually on Friday nights he takes up whatever piece he’s working on and sits in the kitchen whittling, while Mama and I do the dishes. But not tonight. The parlor could be as far away as the mill.
    â€œFinish up, girls,” Mama tells us. But the dumplings are heavy and cold.
    â€œI’m too full,” I say.
    â€œYou’ll see it again tomorrow.” We nod. “Then let’s get the kitchen done,” she says. “Bad business cooking for them that won’t eat.”

3
    David and Ben started working at the Asher on Sunday. They won t tell what they did, but Ben says it was “too close to housework” for him.
    That makes me mad. It’s easy for them to scorn clothes-washing and floor-scrubbing and chicken-plucking. It’s all done for them—I even make up their bed! And Mama’s silly about them; she always has been: David because he’s her firstborn and Ben because he’s so much like Daddy as a boy. At least that’s what she thinks:
    â€œI just look at him and catch up on all of Jim Perritt I missed.”
    And Ben doesn’t look any more like Daddy than a frog.
    â€œIt’s his walk,” she says. “It’s how he looks out of his eyes.”
    So I’m glad they’re getting a little taste of dust rags and paste wax. I hope Mr. Asher has them do everything that’s to be done. Puts them in little aprons. Makes them wear maid hats. I’d walk the four miles to town just to see it!
    They’ve got to work all this week, which is the last one before school starts. Then they’ll go in on Saturdays for a while. I wonder if all those fancy lunches were worth it.
    Mama and I are busy getting clothes ready for school. Monday we altered and mended, yesterday we washed, and today were ironing. We’re set up in the kitchen with basket, clothes, the board, and three irons—one to heat up while the other cools from use, and a small one for finishing.
    â€œNo child of mine is going to drag around like a ragamuffin,” she says, as though that’s a fate you have to fight all the time. “You’re lucky, Mandy. You’re the one with new clothes.”
    But new isn’t exactly the word. Mama’s sister, Aunt Laura, sent a box of her discarded clothes from Memphis. That’s where Omie lives too. It’s not that the clothes aren’t nice—they’re too nice is the problem: a black file suit, nipped at the waist; a water-blue taffeta skirt; a slick red dress with hardly a front.
    â€œHow could she wear that?” I ask Mama.
    â€œWell, Laura’s endowed,” she says.
    â€œEndowed? You mean with